CURRY MSS.

The letters are concentrated in the years that Debs served a
sentence in the Atlanta Penitentiary for conviction under the
Espionage Act of 1917 and 1918. Some seventy of the letters are
undated but a perusal of the contents separates them into
Pre-prison, Prison, Post-prison, and Indefinite categories. The
Pre-prison letters were probably written from Colorado where he
had gone for a rest. The letters from Prison are largely personal
in nature. The Post-prison letters are written on stationary for
the Congressional Campaign of 1922 and from Lindlahr Sanitarium.
The Indefinite letters belong to a period of time when he was
criscrossing the country on lecture tours. Throughout the letters
will be found comments on treatment for colds at Lindlahr
Sanitarium, a portrait to be painted by a Russian artist, the
recent death of Eva Amelia (Parke) Ingersoll, (Mrs. Robert Green
Ingersoll), Helen Gardner, "the first woman to play Cleopatra on
the silent screen", Ralph Chaplin the revolutionist, a meeting
with William Zebulon Foster, the Pullman Strike of 1894, smoking,
Mrs. Lovejoy of Girard, Kansas, and Robert Addison Hague.

Other letters of Debs are written to Rosalie Heaton Goodyear,
editorial assistant on radical and liberal papers, and poet.
Those written to her while in the Atlanta Penitentiary are on the
backs of old envelopes. Goodyear in turn relates how she was
introduced to Debs and how she received the letters via his
secretary Mabel (Dunlap) Curry.

Other correspondents include Mabel (Dunlap) Curry, Theodore
Debs, 1864-1945, bookkeeper and younger brother of Eugene Victor
Debs, and William H. Henry, fl. 1922, socialist official. Henry
wrote to Debs while Debs was serving in the Moundsville, West
Virginia, prison prior to going to Atlanta.

The letters of 1945 relate to the writing of a biography of
Debs by Irving Stone.

Several snapshots and photographs of Debs, from 1897-1922, and
a folder of printed pieces complete the collection. Some of the
letters are accompanied by typescripts.

Collection size: 149 items

For more information about this collection and any related materials contact the
Public Services Department, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405.
Call (812) 855-2452 or send an email using our Ask a Question form.